A Nuriko Moment
by Irony-chan
Summary: FINISHED! One of Lady Kourin's waitingmaids accidentally bursts in on an unusual scene.


A NURIKO MOMENT  
  
(NOTE: this is quite old, quite short, and quite pointless... and it's not particularly IC, either. It's just a scene I couldn't get out of my head.)  
  
  
The Lady Kourin never allowed her maids-in-waiting to come into her bathing room.  
  
Like any other large organization, the Imperial Palace in Kounan City had its share of resident gossips, and the gossips had a number of hypotheses about the Lady Kourin's modesty. Most of these theories involved things like warts in embarrassing places, large and unsightly birthmarks, or the scars of a childhood accident or beating. The favourite explanation by far, though, was that the Lady Kourin padded her bra. It couldn't be very *good* padding, because her ladyship didn't look all that well endowed, but for some reason people liked that theory anyway.  
  
Maybe the reason why was because they realized, at some subconscious level, that out of all the explanations suggested the padded bra was the closest to the truth.  
  
The truth itself was something none of the gossips had ever guessed, and they'd have been deeply shocked to find out about it. It's ironic, really, that as her ladyship's maids gossiped away while tidying the bedroom, the Lady Kourin herself was right in the next room, taking her bath, with her secret exposed for anybody who happened to walk in.  
  
Or perhaps we'd better say *his* secret.  
  
The bath water was still steamy-hot and full of floral smelling bubbles, and very relaxing. Nuriko was on the verge of falling asleep in the tub when one of the waiting-maids knocked on the bathroom door. "Milady," she said, "you're expected for breakfast in half an hour."  
  
"I'll be out in just a moment," Nuriko replied. "Why don't you all go have something to eat?"  
  
"Thank you, Milady," said the waiting-maid. She passed this on to the rest of the servants, and Nuriko heard their footsteps as they left the room. He waited until they were gone before, reluctantly since the water was still so nice and warm, getting out of the bath.  
  
The bathroom door had a lock on it, but even so he was very careful. The reasoning behind waiting until the maids were gone before leaving the bathtub was the same that applied to using much more bubble bath than was strictly necessary; it reduced the possibility of somebody bursting in and seeing things Nuriko didn't mean for the world to know about. He wasn't deaf. He'd overheard the rumours that he lacked a little feminine anatomy on the upper part of him... he didn't need for that story to have a corollary concerning a few extras down below.  
  
He took his pink bathrobe down off its hook, wrapped up in it, and tied the sash, then let his long grape-purple hair down from the tight bun he'd put it in to keep it from trailing in the bath water. The hot bath had steamed up the mirror so that no clear images were visible in it. Nuriko used the sleeve of the bathrobe to wipe a section clear, and then examined his reflection. He frowned and reached up to rub one cheek. Still looking in the mirror, he ran a hand across his lower face, and then under his jaw to where it met his neck.  
  
Sure enough, he had the beginnings of stubble. Nuriko sighed and made a terrible face. Shaving was a job he absolutely despised; it represented a sort of slap-in-the-face reminder from the universe that he wasn't really a woman. However, if he wanted to be able to pass as female, it was a job that had to be done... and better sooner than later.  
  
He got down on hands and knees and opened the door of the bathroom cupboard. Towards the back was a fairly innocent looking basket full of unused pink hair curlers. Nuriko pulled it out and sorted through the curlers until he found the two items the curlers were there to hide: a razor and a cake of shaving soap.  
  
Nuriko mixed a couple of curls of the soap with warm water and lathered it up, then started smearing the resulting white foam over his cheeks, jaw, and upper lip, running some up in front of his ears and towards his temples. He had to be very careful to maintain the shape of his hairline; a woman's was slightly different from a man's.  
  
"Milady!" shouted a voice from outside, and there was a series of knocks on the bathroom door. "Can I speak to you?"  
  
"In a moment," replied Nuriko. He used his left hand to hold his hair back, and began scraping his face with the razor.  
  
"Milady, it's urgent," said the voice, which belonged to one of Nuriko's waiting-maids. "May I come in?"  
  
"No!" Nuriko replied quickly. Why did the woman have to choose *now*, of all times, to show up? He tried to hurry with shaving.  
  
"It's very important, your ladyship," insisted the waiting-maid.  
  
"Could you give me a minute, please?" asked Nuriko, thinking fast. "I'm... uh... I'm taking care of... it's my time of month!" He tried to remember the last time he'd used that as an excuse for something. It hadn't been all that long ago, but he needed to keep the waiting-maid from prying. "I'll be out in a... ow! In a second!"  
  
"Drat," he added in a lower voice. Halfway through his sentence he'd suffered the usual consequence of trying to shave and talk at the same time. He'd nicked himself just below and in front of his left ear, and a bead of blood was welling up from the spot.  
  
"Drat," he repeated, "now what?" How was he going to hide that? Nuriko set the razor down and gathered up his hair, twisting it up on top of his head and then letting part hang down on one side. Not bad. It would conceal the cut, and might even look like a fashion statement in the process. Maybe an unusual hairdo was what he needed to attract the emperor's notice...  
  
"Milady?" asked the waiting maid. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Oh, no," muttered Nuriko, letting his hair fall. "I'm fine!" he called. He tore a corner off a sheet of toilet paper and, still cursing under his breath, stuck it over his self-inflicted wound. With that to absorb the blood, he picked up the razor again and bent over the sink to finish shaving.  
  
That's when he heard a click. He straightened up just in time to realize that HE HAD FORGOTTEN TO LOCK THE BATHROOM DOOR.  
  
"Milady, I," began the maid as she opened the door, but then she stopped short. True, she'd heard all the rumours that floated around, and also true that judging from what her ladyship had been saying, all was not well, but the maid was entirely unprepared for what she saw. Warts, scars, birthmarks, a padded bra... these were all things she could have handled...  
  
However, faced by the sight of Nuriko with a razor in one hand, a square of toilet paper in the other, and shaving lather all over the right half of his face, the poor maid simply didn't know how to react.  
  
Nuriko and the waiting-maid stared, speechless, at each other for a second or two before an important fact got through to the maid's shock-muddled brain. The Lady Kourin was shaving her face... that's not something women normally need to do... therefore the Lady Kourin was probably not in fact a *lady* at all...  
  
The maid screamed.  
  
Nuriko screamed right back.  
  
The maid screamed again, and then fainted dead away.  
  
Nuriko shut his mouth and looked at the maid's unconscious body, realizing that he was probably very lucky. At least the woman had the decency to faint instead of running off in hysterics, shouting his secret out to the entire palace. He peeked out of the bathing room and saw that there was nobody in the bedchamber. Good. Nuriko put down the razor, then scooped up the maid and carried her out to the bedchamber, where he set her down in a chair.  
  
Then he hurried back to the bathroom (locking the door this time, and making sure the lock actually *worked*) to finish shaving and fix his hair.  
  
When the maid came to, she blinked sleepily and then looked up to see the Lady Kourin, fully dressed and with her hair done in an unusual new style, watching her.  
  
"M... m... milady?" asked the maid.  
  
The Lady Kourin sniffed. "You've overslept again," she said sharply. "I ought to dismiss you, lazy girl!"  
  
"I... I'm sorry, your ladyship," stammered the maid. "I... it won't happen again... I..." she gulped. "Milady, I..." she sat up and leaned forward a little... the Lady Kourin's hair covered the left side of her ladyship's face, and the maid couldn't see if there was a cut near her ladyship's ear. No, that was ridiculous. It must have been a dream. A dream brought on by too much gossip and an overactive imagination.  
  
"Whatever are you doing?" demanded the Lady Kourin, reaching up and running two fingers through her hair. The action brought a lock of it further forward, doing an even more thorough job of hiding her cheek.  
  
"N... nothing, milady," the maid apologized. "I'm sorry."  
  
"Well, hurry up and go have your breakfast," ordered the Lady Kourin, being uncharacteristically short-tempered. "And this oversleeping has *got* to stop. Next time it happens, you'll be looking for another job!"  
  
"O... of course, your lor... your ladyship." The maid got up, curtsied clumsily, and left the room just as fast as she could. As she hurried out, Nuriko heard her mutter, "no more sake right before bed... ever again!"  
  
Nuriko leaned on the wall, shut his eyes and let out a long breath. That had been a close one! 


End file.
